


an island free of time

by thenewdarling



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, oh to be eating street food in a warm place not worrying about anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:41:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28904298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenewdarling/pseuds/thenewdarling
Summary: The TARDIS crashes and leaves the Doctor and Bill Potts in Atlantis for a few hours.aka I wrote a little drabble, and it ended up being post-COVID holiday wish fulfilment
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	an island free of time

The entire console room shook and rattled at its foundations. Bill clung on for dear life. “Are we crashing? Oh my God, are we gonna die?”

“You know, they just don’t make companions like they used to!” the Doctor shouted over the racket. “Back in the day, the TARDIS was like this all the time! I’d get shin splints popping out to Sainsbury’s!”

“So we’re ok?”

“No, I think we’re gonna die!” he shouted matter-of-factly. “We’ve fallen out of time. Bloody potholes. You know I’ve been onto the Council. Now that they exist again.”

“You’re very chilled out about this!”

“Gallows humour, I suppose…” he said, and then they hit something.

The lights went out, the console spitting noxious steam. Bill rolled over on the ground, blinking as the world came back into focus. The only light was a dim natural glimmer from one of the roundels, throwing the dim wreck of the room around them into relief.

“We still here? Are we dead?”

“We might’ve been uploaded to the Nethersphere, but honestly I doubt it,” the Doctor said. “I don’t think it would get signal this far out.”

“Where are we?”

“Nowhere. No-when. Nothing.” He flicked a switch on the console -- nothing happened. “Outside that door is nothing at all. The entire universe is now our tiny blue box,” the Doctor said, spinning the monitor round to him. “Oh. I tell a lie. We’re in Atlantis. Local temperature, 32 degrees, chance of rain later.”

Bill scoffed. “Come on. Atlantis isn’t real.”

“Well, not anymore. It’s what we time travellers call a _complex object_. Unwritten and rewritten in time so many times there’s nothing left but a ragged hole in the paper.”

“But we can come here?”

“Apparently,” the Doctor said. He put the handbrake on.

“Can we get back?”

“No idea. Tell you what though, I’ll start the TARDIS calculating a route. Just to be safe,” he adjusted some dials, then stepped to the door. “Coming?”

“Are we safe?”

“I don’t know.”

“But we’re not gonna get sucked down a time hole or something?”

“No idea.” He looked at her, trying to parse her expression. “Do you wanna just wait here? Cos we can wait here.”

“Do you think we should wait here?”

“That’s not what I asked,” the Doctor said.

Bill weighed the butterflies in her stomach. “Ok, let’s do it.”

He opened the door, and they stepped out into a world which didn’t exist.

#

Compared to the darkness in the TARDIS, it was blindingly bright outside. And warm. It was like stepping off a plane for the first time when you go on holiday, Bill thought. The warmth on her, and the wind in her hair. She took a deep inhale, enjoying the moment.

“Hang on a second!” she said. “I thought Atlantis was meant to be underwater!”

“So’s Venice if you wait long enough,” the Doctor said, locking the TARDIS door behind him.

They were standing at the top of a hill, looking out on a bustling coastal city. A marketplace sprawled before them. “Come on!”

#

It was almost Ancient Greek, but not quite. The architecture, the fashion of the people milling around. Columns of blue marble, and jewellery of rare stones. Street food -- pig and beef and pulses. Bill was reminded of learning about the Etruscans. This tiny nation she’d never heard of growing up. An entire culture, hugely influential to the Greeks and the Romans, but absorbed. Assimilated. Forgotten. A distant reflection, the details inferred from guesswork years later. This was like that, she thought.

The Doctor was eyeing up a large pendant like a medallion. He held it up to his neck. “What do you think?” he said.

“Bit bling for you, old man,” Bill said, smiling.

“I’ll have you know I invented bling,” he said, and he started going off on one of his rants. Bill tuned him out, looking at the next stall. An assortment of scarves in that same shade of deep blue. She’d never seen anything like it, but it was everywhere here. In the silverware, the architecture, the jewellery.

She teased the scarf’s fabric with her finger, trying to feel the grain of it. There were shimmering blue cables woven into it. “Excuse me,” she asked. “What is the material in this?”

The stall-owner looked confused. “Are you a tourist? We don’t get many of those these days.”

“Just stopping through,” Bill smiled.

“It’s orichalcum. The pride of Atlantis.”

Suddenly, The Doctor appeared over Bill’s shoulder like a bat. He smiled at the shopkeeper. “Absolutely wonderful craftsmanship,” he said. 

Bill jumped. “How do you just appear like that?”

“I’ve got Silent Mode on my shoes,” he said. “Come on, I’ve found something.”

#

He pulled his hands from her eyes, and she took it in. “Oh my God…”

A temple to Athena, entirely in the blue orichalcum. It shimmered in the heat of the sunlight like dappling on the ocean. A bust of the goddess stood in the front, as though seeming to protect it. People made passing prayers as they went inside.

“What is this stuff? The orichalcum,” Bill asked under her breath, as they approached. She made a motion to copy the others, taking water from a fountain before the bust and spritzing it over her.

The Doctor had his sonic sunglasses on, and was fiddling with one of the legs. “I’m not sure. It appears to be some kind of raw mineral ore, but it behaves more like a refined alloy. It’s about as soft as aluminium, but ductile and conductive like copper.”

“And they only have it here?”

“Apparently,” the Doctor said, as they walked into the hall.

There was an inherent hush as they entered the temple, all footsteps echoed so people spoke in hushed tones. It felt very like going into a library.

“Do you think that has anything to do with why Atlantis disappeared?”

He looked at her, the sunglasses hiding his big, furrowed eyebrows. “Why do you say that?”

“Are we not going to bring them back?”

He took the sunglasses off, looking apologetic. “Bill. They’ve disappeared and reappeared so many times, honestly I don’t think there’s anything we could do for them. Frankly, I’m amazed we got here ourselves.”

“But, they’re here. They’re alive. We have to do something?”

“I honestly think if we were to take them from here, they’d unravel completely,” he said.

She looked crestfallen. “How long do they have?”

The Doctor shrugged. “I don’t know. But I would imagine time works differently here. Maybe they repeat today over and over. Or maybe one day they’re here, the next they’re gone, then back again. Who can tell from outside?”

She smiled. “Like rising out of the sea.”

“Like rising out of the sea,” he agreed. He picked up a little statue of Athena. “Is this a little shop?” he said, looking around at all the other little statues like it. “I love a little shop.”

“Hey!” came a voice.

The Doctor put it back down.

“You weren’t supposed to touch it! The whole thing’s ruined now!” a man in a toga was running towards them.

“Oop, better go,” the Doctor said, and the two of them legged it.

#

Bill sat on a bench overlooking a cliff, eating an ice cream. It was mango flavour, and pretty good considering they didn’t seem to have dairy.

“You know, I can think of worse places to be stuck,” she said.

“Yes, quite,” the Doctor said. He was eating some heavily spiced fish he’d gotten at a stall with a wooden fork. “You know, I thought all this would be lost forever.” He waved his fork hand as used his tongue to pick a bit of fish from between his molars. “They actually use it as an example in the Academy. Well. The less said about them the better.”

“They didn’t seem very surprised to see us though.”

“Who knows how they experience time? Maybe yesterday this place was all underwater. Maybe tomorrow it’ll be full of tourists. Maybe three days from now there’ll be nothing at all, and then they’ll be back again.”

“Hm,” Bill thought about it. “It’s kind of like what we do, except the other way round.” The thought comforted her. It was nice to embrace the impermanence, rather than run from it.

The Doctor patted his jacket, and pulled something from his inside pocket. The TARDIS key, glowing with orange energy. “TARDIS is all done. Ready to go.”

“Two more minutes,” she said. She closed her eyes, smelled the salt air.

She wasn’t sure what would happen tomorrow, but today, the sun was shining, she was eating ice cream, and she had this.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn’t realise until I was posting this how canonically shortly after this Bill gets [spoiler], which makes it a bit sadder lol
> 
> Oh well, I’ve decided that’s no longer canon and you can’t stop me Moffat


End file.
